The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1887-11-21

:
good to Indianapoitan here the land of the
Neapoitau. Even If is not of your set or
your party, we forget all such differences when
sundered far from our own native land we meet
foreign shore. The most recent visitors
from Indianapolis were Rev. Mr. McCulioch
and his wife. and it was a pleasure for me and
mine to make their brief stay of five days agree
able and profitable was in power Know
ing that Mir. McCuiloeh would be here I had
kept file of the Indianapolis journal for him.
so we could talk over the iniquites of the Doc
tor Harrison ring and of the Sim Coy gang in
this land, where. in the days of antiquity. they
had Nero ring, and, in modern times, 'Bom-
ba" gang.
One day we went 10 Pompeii, whore excava-
lions continually going on, and there is ev-
Rymonth something new brought TO the surface.
Even since my last letter TO the Journal there
nave been some important discoveries at Pom
peii, account OF which 1 sent to the press in
London and Paris. Plenty of implements for
writing have always been found at Pompeii
such the stylus. pens-one reed tcalamusD
pen and several metallic psns-bronze pens
made in the same form of the present day
ssarly 1880 years before elliott & Perry were
born. There are WRISTBANDS in the museum at
Naples. tina. have been found in vast quantity,
some of them very pretty. But the materials
for writing have been very rare ''finds,' and
only thrice since the discovery of Herculaneum
and Pompeii have there been found papYrus
manuscripts and wooden tablets viz: "a the
papvrus MSS discovered at Herculaneum in
1852. in the magnificent house in which, and In
whose garden. were found the magnificent
bronze busts and statues of the Ptolemies, the
so-called Plato and Seneca. the Mercury re-
pose, the sleeping and drunken fauns, the
called Oiscobuli tproba0ly diversl and many
other and similar works of art; (2) number of
their wooden tablets (which, when covered
with wax. were written upon with stvlusl were
found at Pompeii in 1879; and f3d) several
more tablets were unearthed at Pomp In Sep
Eember. 1887.
Every one knows the story of the papyrus
MSS. found at Herculaneum. They were car
BOMBED by time. and they had been subjected to
the pressure OF sixty feet of pummice stone and
heavy mud asnee-L O.. mud from the volcano
rolled over the pumrnice stone-and this pres
sure continued from 79 A. ID. until the year 1885,
when the first lava in historic times issued from
Mount Vesuvius. Neither Hercuianeum
Pompei were destroyed by fire or lsva-indeed
no lava has ever rolled upon Pompei although
the city was originally built upon prehistoric
lsva-bed. Now. the various eruptions of Vesu-
wins since A. D. 1896 have. at nine different
times. sent slow-movlne streams or lava upou
the already covered Herculaueum, until sixty
feet more of q substance almost as heavy as cast
iron superimp posed upon the other sixty
feet of pummice stone and mnd-ashes. which
last had become more or less soidified. The
pressure, then, of these three substances made
Herculaneum very IN -eet-atable, and that is the
reason, together with the vested rights OF pro-
prietors in the modern city OF Resina above,
why they have never uncovered more than
few acres of Herculaneum But have no doubt
that a certain amount of air and moisture pene-
traied the pummice stone and ashes previous to
1886, and thus the paDyrus MSS. originally
straw-colored, became partially carbonlzed, like
the bog-wood dug up in ireland. This carboni-
cation arrested by the lava coming, which
Theoretically sealed everything. No doubt the
presence of the pumice- stone and ashes affected
the papyrus which ontains a certain amount of
.elutinous matter. and thus the MSS. would be
stuck pressed more or loss together. The
suit was q solid. black coal-like LOOKING sub
stance and the excavators, working under
ground (for the house and garden where the
MSS and statues we're found have since been
laid oDen to the sun, but worked like mine) at
first took these black looking masses to be
provision of charcoal. and the house was for
time actually called the Casa del Carbonate"
1t was only when one DAY the workmen. during
the hour of their MONDAY meal, were playing
with the debris, which had been carried ont into
the omen air, and singing what they supposed
20 be coal at another. that one of the super
intendents happened to notice the appearance of
letters upon the shattered remains of these
small hard, black rolls One thousand
hundred and ffty-six of these volsmina trolls
whence our name volume) were secured from
destruction. About five hundred OF these have
been uurolled by the simple, vet ingenious, in
vention of the priest Antonio Piazzi. Some of
them have been published They are. for the
most part, written in Greek. ard consist of
treatise of Epicurus on Mature" OF Phiostra-
and nine essays of Philodemus on 'Music," THE
Vices and Virtues" Rhetoric" Life and Man
ners' and "a Guide to the Reading of Homer"
The only Latin work which has BEEN published
is a poem upon one of the campaigns OF Cesar
with his friend Marc Antony. More
than thousand of these black volumes
yet apparently solid masses, and doubt
IL ever they will be- unrolled
After more than a century the next discovery
OF writings on materials especially used by the
ancients, made at Pompeii, but this time
On the 5th of july. 1875 in the so-called House
of Jucundus." on the northern border of Pom
peii, was found box containing about 100 tab
let's, consisting of thin pieces of wood las thin
the middle portion of an ordinary shingle) three
and one-half by four and one-half inches, which,
according To the manner of the Romans were
tied in twos threes together. and then folding
up like book. These small thin pieces of wood
were coun tersunk and covered with a compost
ton of breswaX on the inner sides, and upon
this wax the ancients wrote with o poiutsd
stylus. Wax is one of the most durable OF all
substances that men have employet to write
upon, save metal, and stone, and terra Gotta,
and that is the reason the ancients used it. Long
after parchments nave decayed the wax seals
remain and. unless heat comes in contact with
it, common beeswax, AS well as sealing wax.
lin which com position the former enters1 Will re-
main for ages.
Apropos of the durability of wax. let say
that in the wonderful collection OF the famous
Naples Museum there is a mask OF wax taken
from tomb near Cuma. la city settled 1l50 b.
G and that mask is something so perfect ex-
cept in color, that all archaoloeists say that it
was taken from the face during life. In this
tomb whence taken the mask in question,
were also found four headless skeletons, which
have given rise TO the supposition that these
four persons were Christians. decapitated
during some one of the prosecutions under the
Roman Emperors. If this were the case the
wax would be of the somewhere between
Nero, the first prosecuting Emperor and Do
cletiau. the last that 10, somewhere during per-
od OF PAL years The would be then at
least about 1000 years old. But the Romans
during that time did not bury except the Chris
tians), for the pagan Romans cremated from
about 300, B. c., up to a late period. Christians
beheaded would not have been allowed sumptu-
burial in fine tomb; they would have been
thrust into ditch, or by kind friends hidden
away in deserted Quarries. or elsewhere. There
FORE conclude that this wax mask entombed
with the four headless skeletons. must go back TO
the ante-cremation period, when Cuma was still
Greek city to which. centuries before, Tar
iuin, the Proud, retired after being Justly over